[Minor spoilers ahead]
One of 2004's best releases, director/scriptwriter Alexander Payne's "Sideways" MUST break out of the limited-screens world and make it to theaters all over. Inspired directing and terrific, occasionally haunting, acting combine to make a couple of hours just slip away.
Set in Southern California, middle school English teacher and aspiring novelist, the recipient of many rejection letters, Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) takes his closest friend, Jack (Thomas Hayden Church) for a week of R&R before the latter's wedding to a beautiful young woman. An opening scene suggests - and the story later confirms - that Jack, an occasional TV actor now plying his trade doing commercial voice-overs, is definitely marrying up.
Miles, divorced for two years and still emotionally on the ropes, is a dedicated wine connoisseur, knowledgeable but unpretentious. For the week's holiday they drive to vineyard country where Miles has been many times. Tasting different vintages and golf is Miles's goal for this buddy "we may not be able to do this again soon" foray. Jack has other ideas. A handsome man largely controlled by his penis rather than either his brain or his heart, he views the trip as a chance for a week long sex-laced bachelor party for two, one (him) if that's the way the cards fall.
The guys meet two women through a winery visit, Stephanie (Sandra Oh) and Maya (Virginia Madsden). Maya is a divorcée, Stephanie is single with a little girl. Miles doesn't know how to start being single and available while Jack is experienced in forgetting his impending nuptials while laying on the charm (such as it is-I found his persona, well, disgusting). Jack also tells the women that Miles's novel has been accepted for publication and his friend haplessly accepts the lie.
Pledged not to reveal Jack's deception, Miles tries to deal with his own attraction to Maya, a potential momentous release from therapy-supported, pill-popping crutches that allow him to function as an involuntarily single man.
What makes "Sideways" work fabulously is the terrific acting of the four principals. Giamatti, not much competition for Jude Law, is an "Everyman." That is, an "Everyman" who finds it hard to accept that a love has been lost and whose grieving runs rampant past the time when it should abate. Giamatti is very believable, painfully so I suspect for many male viewers, and his special ability to telegraph feelings and moods through body language boosts his performance. Church plays Jack for laughs but many viewers will recognize a churlish, actually cruel, cad long before there's evidence to support the charge.
Virginia Madsden is a very talented actress. Her Maya, like Miles, has been divorced for a few years but she has it together. With a well-developed love of wine and a willingness to move on, she's an engaging character. And then there's Sandra Oh, one of the few successful actresses of Korean ancestry. As Patti in "Under the Tuscan Sun" she was wrenchingly real as a pregnant woman abandoned by her lover. Here she's ready for happiness and unprepared for gross deception and cruel manipulation. Oh is a veteran actress but many of her movies are not well known. She's going to be in a lot more top drawer films since the Diane Lane hit and "Sideways." I hope.
And, by the way, the scenery is great too.
This is a true adult film in the best sense of the term. Alternately very funny and affectingly sad, Alexander Payne has crafted a first-rate movie. As he showed in 1996's "Miss Liberty," he knows how to make his characters come alive.
9/10
One of 2004's best releases, director/scriptwriter Alexander Payne's "Sideways" MUST break out of the limited-screens world and make it to theaters all over. Inspired directing and terrific, occasionally haunting, acting combine to make a couple of hours just slip away.
Set in Southern California, middle school English teacher and aspiring novelist, the recipient of many rejection letters, Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) takes his closest friend, Jack (Thomas Hayden Church) for a week of R&R before the latter's wedding to a beautiful young woman. An opening scene suggests - and the story later confirms - that Jack, an occasional TV actor now plying his trade doing commercial voice-overs, is definitely marrying up.
Miles, divorced for two years and still emotionally on the ropes, is a dedicated wine connoisseur, knowledgeable but unpretentious. For the week's holiday they drive to vineyard country where Miles has been many times. Tasting different vintages and golf is Miles's goal for this buddy "we may not be able to do this again soon" foray. Jack has other ideas. A handsome man largely controlled by his penis rather than either his brain or his heart, he views the trip as a chance for a week long sex-laced bachelor party for two, one (him) if that's the way the cards fall.
The guys meet two women through a winery visit, Stephanie (Sandra Oh) and Maya (Virginia Madsden). Maya is a divorcée, Stephanie is single with a little girl. Miles doesn't know how to start being single and available while Jack is experienced in forgetting his impending nuptials while laying on the charm (such as it is-I found his persona, well, disgusting). Jack also tells the women that Miles's novel has been accepted for publication and his friend haplessly accepts the lie.
Pledged not to reveal Jack's deception, Miles tries to deal with his own attraction to Maya, a potential momentous release from therapy-supported, pill-popping crutches that allow him to function as an involuntarily single man.
What makes "Sideways" work fabulously is the terrific acting of the four principals. Giamatti, not much competition for Jude Law, is an "Everyman." That is, an "Everyman" who finds it hard to accept that a love has been lost and whose grieving runs rampant past the time when it should abate. Giamatti is very believable, painfully so I suspect for many male viewers, and his special ability to telegraph feelings and moods through body language boosts his performance. Church plays Jack for laughs but many viewers will recognize a churlish, actually cruel, cad long before there's evidence to support the charge.
Virginia Madsden is a very talented actress. Her Maya, like Miles, has been divorced for a few years but she has it together. With a well-developed love of wine and a willingness to move on, she's an engaging character. And then there's Sandra Oh, one of the few successful actresses of Korean ancestry. As Patti in "Under the Tuscan Sun" she was wrenchingly real as a pregnant woman abandoned by her lover. Here she's ready for happiness and unprepared for gross deception and cruel manipulation. Oh is a veteran actress but many of her movies are not well known. She's going to be in a lot more top drawer films since the Diane Lane hit and "Sideways." I hope.
And, by the way, the scenery is great too.
This is a true adult film in the best sense of the term. Alternately very funny and affectingly sad, Alexander Payne has crafted a first-rate movie. As he showed in 1996's "Miss Liberty," he knows how to make his characters come alive.
9/10